Midnight Magic release

The Midnight Magic Anthology is coming out on the 25th of April and is now up for pre-order. Below is a snippet from my title in the anthology ‘Pack, What Pack, Were?’

Pack, What Pack, Were?

I walked to the nearby stream, carefully leaving a trail of human footprints. I started shivering as the crystal clear, but icy cold, water went to my knees. Then I started shifting. It was neither is pleasurable as the second shift had been nor as painful as the first. In a lot of ways, it just was. I mean it was just a part of me, of who I was.

It’s hard to describe what the world is like through a wolf’s eyes compared to humans. Some colors are more intense, others are duller. You’ve got an overlay of wafting scent colors. All the smells around you subtly add an almost misty overlay to what you see. Gods this is frustrating. It’s like trying to describe the color pink to someone who is blind. It’s exactly like I’m telling you but it’s different as well. What it really is, though, most importantly, is both thrilling and wondrous.

I didn’t look at myself. I had been told by Mom and my sisters that I was large for a wolf. I assumed that any other Were I met would be about the same size. My sister Kate loves petting me in my wolf form. She cooed about how beautiful I was. Vanities aren’t a particularly wolfish trait, though. Fitness, and the fact that I was healthy, those were important to me. Whether I was pretty or not? I couldn’t have cared less.

I could scent a rabbit nearby. There was a slight shift in its odor as it went from concerned to nervous. Rabbits are a massive pest here, so I felt no concern about immediately giving chase. This was part of the reason I’d come out here, after all.

I started by stalking closer, as I was downwind of it. My odor wouldn’t travel cleanly to it. By carefully zigzagging as the breeze shifted, I managed to get within ten meters of it. That was more than pushing my luck, but I was doing this as much for practice as out of hunger. Shifting did leave me hungry, but it’s not the sort of ravenous hunger that you hear of in books and from movies.

The rabbit had calmed down briefly, so I took my chance and made a lightning lunge. My jaws slammed around its neck, and I shook it, snapping its neck quickly. There was no reason to cause unnecessary pain or harm. The sweet, hot taste of its blood filled my mouth, and I started getting down to eating it. I didn’t mind eating the fur and the offal, but I still balked at eating the brains and skull. I could easily have crushed it, but there was just something about it that disgusted the more human side of me. Even in wolf form.

After eating the rabbit, I started spiraling out from where my tent was. The eucalyptus smell through a wolf’s nose is so much more intense and so relaxing. I had to be careful it didn’t lull me into complacency. There could be a human out here hunting feral dogs for all I knew. I’d never camped in this place before.